Vera Brittain | Criticism

[Testament of Experience] is a unique compound of doom and domesticity. For as Miss Brittain surveys the world in flames, she sees pictures in the fire; pictures of herself writing books, receiving cheques, buttonholing statesmen, handing out advice like a universal aunt. She is Narcissus, Cassandra and Mrs. Caudle all in one. Her books are given parity of esteem with the bombs….

For the historian, the most significant part of this singular and revealing story is Miss Brittain's description of how she, in 1937, became a militant pacifist calling on Englishmen to refuse to fight….

When the war ended, Miss Brittain "said goodbye to frustration" and flew to Europe in order to see the sights and lecture the survivors….

Miss Brittain writes like a literary Nero, with a fountain-pen instead of a fiddle, as she recounts her trek from bomb to book publisher, from catastrophe to her country cottage...